To all of our labor communicators out there we want to share a few Twitter tips with you that we’ve found useful. As with any social media platform, we recommend that before you dive in, you have a plan. So with your Twitter plan in hand, here are a few usage tips to assist you on your Twitter journey.
Conversational content:
Twitter lends itself to a conversational tone. However, it’s important to ensure your tone isn’t too relaxed when tweeting on behalf of your union’s account. The trick is to balance maintaining a “union” voice, with posting content that is relevant to your causes and useful to your followers. Also, for business and organization accounts it’s best to stay away from slang and terminology that a general audience would not be familiar with.
Here are a few examples of “conversational content”:
- Check out the latest issue of AFGE’s Government Standard for information on the issues AFGE activists are taking to Capitol Hill! [Include link.]
- Did you miss this week’s @afgeradioshow? We’ve got you covered! Listen now at: [include link].
- Get social media tips from @AFGECommSquad by visiting http://www.afgecommtraining.com.
Meeting the character limit:
Twitter’s 140-character limit can be a bit confining but it does help in keeping a message short and sweet. Complete sentences are best when conveying a message, but that can leave you needing to shorten the tweet. Abbreviations are helpful and should follow the conversational yet professional tone. Content is still king and proper spelling and grammar is a must!
Here are a few examples:
- AFGE Pres. Cox joined members and activists to protest proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
- AFGE VA Local 781, Illinois chapters of @NationalNurses & @SEIU to hold event on 11/14 to fight workplace bullying.
Mentions and hashtags:
Mentions and hashtags are a great way to interact with other Twitter users and join a conversation. Mentions (the @ symbol followed by a username) allow you to tag other Twitter accounts in a post. Adding a hashtag (the # symbol followed by letters and/or numbers) to a tweet will add it to an ongoing conversation that uses that specific search term.
Things to remember:
- Starting a tweet with a mention is generally used to direct a comment to a specific user. If you start a tweet with a mention this means that only users following the sender and the user mentioned will see the tweet.
- If you want all of your followers to see a tweet that includes a mention it’s best to begin the tweet with a word or symbol (such as a period).
- Instead of: @TSAUnion members voted in favor of their first collective bargaining agreement. Use: Members of @TSAUnion voted in favor of their first collective bargaining agreement.
- A Twitter user rarely needs to “mention” itself in its own tweet. Usernames are already attached to each tweet and it helps to save valuable tweet space by foregoing use of one’s own @-username.
- Hashtags are search terms for Twitter. Once you click on a hashtag you will see other Twitter users who have included that term in their tweet. Hashtags can only contain letters and numbers, without spaces. Also, if a symbol is added it will break up the hashtag.
- Example: #OurUnion’sAwesome is read by Twitter as #OurUnion
- The effectiveness of hashtags is somewhat debatable. Their usefulness is a bit watered-down because folks have put a # in front of nearly every word and thus searching terms (depending on what it is) can be meaningless. When using hashtags it’s best to search the term first and make sure your tweet won’t end up as part of a conversation that you’d rather not be in.
- Popular labor hashtags include: #1u, #p2, #labor, #union
Twitter clients:
Twitter clients can be very useful in monitoring Twitter interactions and following particular hashtags. Services such as HootSuite and Tweetdeck also will allow you to monitor more than one account. In the case of HootSuite, you can also monitor Facebook and several other social media sites.
These are just a few tips that we’ve put together and there are undoubtedly more Twitter helpful hints floating around the Web. Have you mastered the art of tweeting? Share some of your favorite tips in the comments below.
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